Marketing Social Sessions

Well, Social Sessions is now officially published. I'm no longer a game developer, I'm a marketer. ...nope nope nope, that's not true at all. I hate marketing. It goes back to the summer I tried to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners. TRIED. Never again. But for now, I don't want my development efforts to be wasted and not shared with the world, so alas, I will market however I can.

I started posting about my game to the community on Reddit. Some forums are hostile toward people "self-promoting" their own apps, and others are welcoming to it. Either way, that avenue quickly becomes exhausted. I sent about 150 emails in the last few days (no bulk email tools, just copy/pasting and changing names and email addresses by hand) to sites that review mobile games.

Wouldn't it be fun if there was a market for "local" indie games, the way there's a market for "local" music? Just go down and hang out at your local Cafe or bar and set up your game and let people walk up and play it with their friends. That would be cool. Someone needs to make that happen. Especially in a city like mine, Austin, where there are enough indie developers to warrant it.

Anyway, I've also been trying to use Twitter to spread the word. It's all a little disheartening. I really just want to make fun games, and let people discover them on their own... but I know that there are probably thousands of games out there that I WOULD like if I only KNEW about them... so that lets me know that I need to try as hard as possible to let people know about my game. The goal is to be "loud" enough to get the word to those who will actually enjoy my game, while not being so loud that I annoy everyone else.

Anyway, if you're reading this and you're one of those people that I'm trying to target (lovers of puzzle games, indie games, challenging games), go download Social Sessions on your phone today!

Rejected, Fixed, Resubmitted

Post-holiday update from Hester Games! I was notified shortly after leaving for a Christmas holiday that Apple had rejected Social Sessions because it lacked a "Restore Purchases" button. I knew it was an easy fix, but I wouldn't be able to fix it until I returned in January.

In the Android version, I automatically connected and restored purchases on game start. In the Apple version, I relied on the fact that if you attempt to make the same purchase that you already have, the App Store just asks you if you want to have it again for free. Problem solved. But I guess Apple wants an explicit button there, and that's perfectly fine.

It's been fixed, and resubmitted last night.

Looking forward to exciting new things in the new year!

By the way, you can follow me on Twitter!

Moving toward first update since launch

Well, I've been getting a lot of great feedback from people coming out of the woodwork to help. This is greatly appreciated.

The first update that's going to come out of this is not anything that affects gameplay, but it'll give the game a little more character. I spent last night and tonight creating a system of speech bubbles that will appear in 3 different situations during a level: you've encouraged someone, you've discouraged someone, or you've taken too long to make a move and they're getting bored.

I've attempted to craft these to be at least a little bit humorous, and also attempted to balance the random values so they don't pop up so often to be annoying and repetitive.

Speaking of repetitive, the one thing I have left to do before I push this update out, is create a long list of these funny, short little quotes to avoid repetition, and keep the game fresh. Here are a few examples, for your reading pleasure:

When encouraging a patient:

• "Worth every penny"
• "You're just saying that"
• "Am I your favorite?"

When discouraging a patient:

• "Why am I paying you for this?"
• "It's all meaningless"
• "Maybe I don't get your humor"

When you're taking too long:

• "Should I go and come back?"
• "Are we still on the clock?"
• "I think I just fell asleep"

I hope this helps with keeping the game interesting (and maybe a little less frustrating on those harder levels). In case anyone is reading this... thanks for reading! 

Social Sessions is LIVE

Here's that thing I made:

I had to go out for a little while after publishing the game, so I held off on making any announcements to social media until I got back.

My plan now is to spread the word via:
- My own social media accounts
- Posts to Reddit, and things like that
- Messages to app reviewers to see if they'd like to give the game a try

The idea is to get it in front of as many people as possible (obviously). From what I've seen in user testing, over half of people who actually give the game a chance (as in, actually play it), find them selves sucked in and not wanting to put it down for at least 15 minutes on the first session. I know that the game isn't for everyone (for example, my wife won't play it because she hates puzzle games), so my goal is to cast the net as wide as possible.

I do wonder if publishing on Android and then iOS later will end up hurting me. My fear is that I make a big announcement to everyone I know, and the half that don't have an Android device hear me and are interested, but can't play it. Then, by the time I get it on iOS, they're not as excited about the idea because it's not new any more. I hope that's not the case.

Thanks for keeping up. If you're reading this, then the most important things you can do to help me is to give the game a try, leave me a rating, and share it with anyone you know that might like this kind of game.

Commemorating Me Hitting the "Publish" Button

It takes a little while to sync with the Google Play Store, but I just wanted to commemorate me hitting the "Publish" button on Hester Games' first title: Social Sessions

I have a slew of things to do once it's live to let people know "I exist!", but for now I will wait.